Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American author who grew up in Nebraska. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark.

Cather received both national and state honors. In 1973, the United States Postal Service honored Willa Cather by using her image on a postage stamp. In 1981 the US Mint created the Willa Cather medallion, a half-ounce gold coin.

Cather was elected to the Nebraska Hall of Fame. In 1986, Cather was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Her alma mater, the University of Nebraska-incoln, named residence halls after both Cather and her college friend Louise Pound. Pound had a lifelong career as professor of English at the university and was the first woman president of the Modern Language Association.

Wikipedia

First short-story collection by Willa Cather, published in 1905. Publication of the collection, which contains some of her best-known work, led to Cather's appointment as managing editor of McClure's Magazine, a New York monthly. The stories are linked thematically by their depiction of characters who seek the realm of beauty and imagination but are constantly assaulted by the vulgar and brutal outside world. The story "The Sculptor's Funeral," originally published in McClure's in 1905, concerns the reactions of the townspeople in a prairie village when the body of a famous sculptor is brought back to be buried there. The book's climactic story, now considered an American classic, is PAUL'S CASE.
-- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature